Skip to main content

Los Angeles Olympics Marathon Trials to be Held Oct. 3, 2027 in Nagoya


At a press conference on Feb. 9 the JAAF announced that the Marathon Grand Championship (MGC) race, Japan's marathon trials event for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, will be held Oct. 3, 2027 in Nagoya. Details on the course will be announced at a later date.

The MGC race was first held before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and again before the 2024 Paris Olympics, both times in Tokyo. 16 men including Paris Olympics 6th-placer Akira Akasaki (Kraftia), national record holder Suguru Osako (Li-Ning), 2022 Oregon World Championships marathon team member Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota) and 2025 Tokyo World Championships team member Yuya Yoshida (GMO) have already qualified for the 2027 race, along with 9 women led by Mikuni Yada (Edion), who set a debut marathon record 2:19:57 at last month's Osaka International Women's Marathon. Paris Olympics alternate Ai Hosoda (Edion) has qualified but has announced that she plans to retire after next month's Tokyo Marathon.


Comments

Most-Read This Week

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

Nat'l University Ekiden Updates Here

Looks like I just went over my update limit on Twitter - sorry, it's the first time I've tried to use it for this. I'll look for another option next time. In the meantime I'll add updates to the comments below. Not sure if that has a max too but I guess we'll find out. Update: Part one of the Nationals commentary can be found here .